David Wright: We need to keep on recycling

The Transportation and Public Works Commission of the city of Santa Cruz recently recommended the city scrutinize, possibly using the Police Department, people who redeem beverage containers at California Redemption Value sites. They also recommended the city ask the state to reconsider laws requiring such centers in local communities.

On Tuesday night, the council approved a more measured approach. The council agreed to ask CalRecycle for ideas that reduce rummaging and to ask the Fair Avenue buy-back center to report, as required by law. The council also agreed to to make zoning for new CRV sites conditional on council approval.

Several problems were discussed at the meeting.

One is people stealing metal objects, like ladders and copper pipe, and reselling them at the buy-back center on Fair Avenue. State law requires reporting around every scrap metal purchase and the city is right to ask the Fair Avenue recycler to work with police to stop scrap-metal theft.

There were also complaints about people taking recyclable materials out of their recycling containers (blue curbside bins). This can be annoying but it's hard to imagine spending precious law enforcement resources on the problem.

Finally, some people didn't like the CRV redemption sites because they felt they encourage criminal behavior. Commission Chair Richelle Noroyan says redemption centers are "almost encouraging people to break into the recycling containers." Almost, but not really. There is no evidence that redeeming the refund you paid when you bought a beverage container causes crime.

It's important to remember why the California passed its "bottle bill" back in 1986 and how successful beverage container recycling has been. As a result of the bill, 82 percent of all beverage containers sold in the state are now being recycled; that's over a million tons of glass, plastic, and aluminum each year that does not enter our landfills. It also results in a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions by avoiding the manufacture of new materials.

California has approximately 2,000 redemption centers. In Santa Cruz County we have 14, two of which are in Santa Cruz. These recycling centers are mandated by law; wherever large grocery stores ($2 million in sales or more) sell beverage containers, "convenience zones" are established within a half-mile radius. These zones are where redemption centers are expected to operate and save grocery stores from having to take used beverage containers back over the counter, or pay fines.

The state occasionally allows a larger radius of three miles, but only in rural areas. Stores within Santa Cruz don't qualify for this exemption, but even if they did, the program should not be curtailed; to the contrary, redemption should be expanded. Currently, more than 200,000 tons of plastic bottles are landfilled every year because the containers don't meet CalReycle's container requirements. An additional 4 billion bottles and cans ended up in the landfill that could have been redeemed but nobody claimed the CRV on them..

The ecological arguments that favor recycling are irrefutable. But there is another important issue; at a time when our country is facing a growing income divide between the very wealthy and the very poor, do we really want to be the city that tries to take CRV income away from very low-income people? Closing CRV sites -- or voting against new sites -- would hurt many low-income people, work against the city's Climate Action Plan, and violate a state law that has been successful for 25 years. Let's keep recycling.